Re: Native Complex numbers for LuaJIT-2 [was Re: Benchmark shootout shows LuaJIT 2.0]

[Leo Razoumov <slonik.az@...>]

On 2009-11-02, Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What do people use complex numbers for?
>
>  I'm baffled, me and two guys sitting near me, all with engineering
>  degrees, did lots of pen and paper
>  work with complex numbers in university, but I don't recall ever
>  seeing an algorithm that would benefit
>  from being coded, and I've never, in my 15+ years since graduation,
>  seen any code that uses complex
>  numbers.
>

Pretty much entire signal processing, radio communications. Complex
numbers are everywhere. Your cell-phone, WiFi, DSL modems, etc.
Everywhere you have amplitude and phase, you work with complex numbers
(cos and sin bases are not as convenient :-)

Of course, in embedded systems the implementation is cycle/memory
optimized and normally breaks complex-number operations into separate
real and imaginary parts. But for the simulations (especially of
non-bit exact floating point variety) complex data type is God sent.

--Leo--